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[javasaurus]

Nice article that only says what many of us have said for years. Put the fun back into our video games! MSN article on nostalgic games

The article makes connections between video games and sonnets, saying, "Often it's restrictions, not freedoms, that inspire creativity." I have been previous blasted for suggesting the same thing...I have often suggested that artists who make free-form art, without restrictions on style, cost, or materials, are lesser artists than those who produce greatness within assigned (even self-assigned) boundaries. I suppose the same can be said of politicians...

Comments

[dacuteturtle.livejournal.com]

I gotta agree with you here.

A good example is jazz. Jazz started out as improvising musically over a melody. I love jazz that follows and plays with a melody, but hate jazz that is all freeform. Freeform can get too free. "It's so cool," they say, "Listen to the nuances." "It's so muddy," I say, "Where's the melody? Any melody will do."

Let's face it, pure freedom leaves you with everywhere to go. "Somewhere to go" is a self-imposed restriction, but takes you places.

[dacuteturtle.livejournal.com]

Ah, forgot to add an anectodote.

I was at a game convention a few years ago. All the new consoles were taken with large crowds around them watching the game play, so I sat down at the abandoned old Atari and started playing. A guy walked up and wanted to play, too. We chose Tank Battle, and we had a great time playing Tank Battle in all its clunky glory. I think we played some Warlords, too. When we got finished, we had the largest crowd in the room watching.

Lesson: old <> bad.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

relatedly, consider Shakespeare and his sticking to iambic pentameter, even to the point of full rhyming 14-line sonnets deeply embeded in some of the plays. Even the 8-note scale of music was in its earliest form considered a limitation.

In modern and historical folk music, composing music for scottish pipes where you only have 9 notes to work with, aside from some accidentals that aren't totally in tune (but even being out of tune slightly can be made to work, if the accompanyment fits).

I always feel that film composers seem to get short shrift by the "music establishment", usually because of how they rely on well-known chord structures (and Mozart wasn't?) and are usually composing to somebody else's story (like Tchaikovsky wasn't with his Sleeping Beauty and Romeo and Juliet ballets?). In a sense I feel they have the harder job than a composer not limited to that world, in that they have to provide music with great dynamics, fitting in support and counterpoint while at the same time not interfering with dialog. Music that has to work with non-music elements and not feel out of place or overbearing, and still be listenable on its own, is not easy.